


when the curtain is drawn

by hollow_dweller



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura (Voltron) Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, F/M, Fix-It, Pining Allura (Voltron), Post-Season/Series 08, also when i say "with a happy ending" i mean it's PURE SCHMOOP, focus is on allura, it can be both, no beta we die like men, there is klance but only in the au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 06:33:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17239196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollow_dweller/pseuds/hollow_dweller
Summary: allura had been so wrapped up in convincing herself that she was okay leaving it all behind, that she was okay sacrificing herself for the good of the universe, that the notion of going back stops her short. she looks at her- herself, sees her determination, her desire to help, and she lets herself believe, at least for the moment, in possibilityorallura doesn't die when she sacrifices herself, but rather is thrown into an alternate universe where shiro never died (but neither did zarkon), she never lost her leadership role (but never became a paladin), and keith never left (but lance never...)





	when the curtain is drawn

**Author's Note:**

> i was planning to do a longer version of this, and i still might, but i wanted to get this out there. it’s pure self-indulgence (also i haven’t actually watched s8 so if there are inconsistencies just accept them in the name of ~plot~, because that reasoning’s never lead us astray before)
> 
> i didn’t really intend for this version to get so long, it was supposed to be a bunch of headcanons in bullet point, but here we are. please take this nearly 4000 word ramble about allura missing her boyfriend. it's also why it's in all-lowercase tumblr ~aesthetique~. sorry.
> 
> title from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAoQQHK1umM), the most allurancey of allurance songs

honestly, allura can’t help but feel a little bitter. it’s unfair, she knows, because these paladins have been fighting a war too, they’ve seen their fair share of horrors, zarkon’s nowhere near defeated, this version of her also lost altea and with it everything she ever loved-

it just. it just all seems like it’s so… easy. they’re bonded, to their lions and to each other, and they seem hopeful. they seem determined. they seem motivated. they seem happy.

(allura had come close, for the first time in ages, to something akin to happiness. she feels echoes of that happiness even now, when it seems a lifetime away, when she remembers warm hands, soft despite their gun callouses, covering her own. she remembers a chest she could lean against, exhausted, in those moments where she needed relief for the sheer overwhelming pressure of it all. she remembers wiry but strong arms encircling her, comforting and protective, if even for a moment. she remembers blue eyes, usually so bright with mirth, but in this moment serious- even a little sad- but filled with utter conviction and endless devotion. she remembers _i would follow you across the universe_ -)

*

this team is slightly strange to her in their openness, their friendliness, instantly accepting her story. it does make some sense, considering they had all been experiencing the crumbling of the universe around them, frantically trying to find a way to stop it without even knowing what was causing it. it likely came as a relief to them that instead of the end of all things, they merely got her, jettisoned out of a quintessence rift and into the space directly in front of where the castle- _the castle_ \- was drifting.

she’s lucky to have been wearing her paladin armor, that her helmet could materialize from the sub-reality pocket in their suits that stored their bayards and headgear. she’s luckier still that even here, her bond with blue persists. this blue lion isn’t hers, not really, but as soon as she traverses the vast, imperceptible divide between rift and reality, allura hears her in her head, growling protectively. she can imagine the look on the team’s faces (on his face) as blue had leapt out of her hanger and into space, swallowing her up and carrying her back to safety.

*

they have a million questions, each talking over each other, about where she had come from, what had happened to her, why she was in paladin armor, why blue had come for her. she tries to explain as best she can, tries to keep it brief, but it’s a long story regardless. they talk for vargas, going over differences and similarities, trying to pinpoint the essential moments of divergence.

her alternate universe self, clad in a dress that allura both does and does not miss, in the sort of way one misses a cruel ex-lover, aching but relieved- her alternate self is intent on the alchemic portion of her tale, having never gone to oriande herself (and that diverts them for a whole varga, with allura and coran eagerly pressing her for answers about the altean thought-to-be-a-myth and her stumbling through the story, trying to give them an accurate retelling while avoiding mentioning that she had not taken that journey alone). this allura is eager, hungry for knowledge- naive- and allura is startled when she vows to help send her back to her own reality, to help her get back to her family.

(allura had been so wrapped up in convincing herself that she was okay leaving it all behind, that she was okay sacrificing herself for the good of the universe, that the notion of going back stops her short. she looks at her- herself, sees her determination, her desire to help, and she lets herself believe, at least for the moment, in possibility)

*

she settles into life with this team fairly easily, surprisingly so. they are not so different, if perhaps less burdened- or differently burdened- from her own, and she finds that as the quintants stretch into movements, she becomes relatively comfortable. she still aches for home (still aches for him), but she can set it aside, not gone, but neatly stored until she has both the time and ability to deal with it.

(allura has become very good at this sort of compartmentalization. she remembers expressing this one day, trying to describe how she was coping, despite everything. she remembers warm laughter, and fingers brushing her hair back from her forehead, and warm lips on her skin moving in time with the words, _practice makes perfect, right princess?_ )

it helps that even as similar as they are, they are also markedly different. it is comforting, in a way, to be reminded that although these people are familiar, and warm, and kind, they are not her family. her family is waiting for her beyond the rift, and these people will never replace them.

*

there are some divergences, however, that allura finds she cannot make her peace with. this she discovers one day as she walks into the lounge, instinctively following the warm tones of a familiar laugh, and walks into-

lance, lance (so like hers and yet so very, very not), straddling keith on the couch, grinning down at him, hair tousled and lips red in a way that had at one point been intimately familiar to her. it was a sight she had treasured, that she had hoarded, like the mythical beasts of her childhood tales had hoarded precious metals. it was something she had arrogantly believed was all her own, something she foolishly dared to think she would never lose.

(in that moment it does not matter that in her reality, that belief held true. she was not in that reality- she may never again be in that reality. it doesn’t matter, and allura _burns_ )

lance yelps and clambers off keith’s lap, falling in a tangle of limbs onto the floor. keith leaps up to face her, hand already reaching towards the knife at his back, ready to stave off an intruder. the fire that burns through allura quickly turns to mortification and she squeaks, hands covering her mouth. keith softens and lance pops up from the floor, looking embarrassed but not angry, and waves off her stuttered apology. “it’s not your fault,” he says, looking both smug and contrite, “we shouldn’t have been doing- uh, anything here anyway. totally our bad, princess.” allura ignores keith’s muttered “and whose fault is that” because she knows, she knows _exactly_ who the instigator was, because ancients know that keith was always too reserved for his own good.

(in her universe, that reserved nature had been something she had thanked the ancients for. it was petty, maybe, and a bit unkind, but she knows that she only got her chance to learn to value lance’s love because keith had squandered his, that if he had been more open, or more honest, or simply more brave, she would have- well. she’d be exactly where she is now. she’d never talked to lance about it, because he’d have vehemently denied it, but occasionally, at dinner, or during team meetings, or at increasingly-rare paladin movie nights, keith would meet her eye. with lance, usually, pressed all along her side, or with his arm thrown casually over her shoulder, or with her hand in his back pocket, keith would simply look at her, pause for a long tick, and nod, ever-so-slightly.)

so allura ignores keith, and ignores lance too really, but rather takes a deep breath and fixes what she hopes is a warm, teasing smile on her face. she comes fully into the room as the two boys sit back down, side-by-side, respectable and chaste, and folds herself up on the other end of the couch. she urges them to tell her about it, about what brought them together, and laughs when lance exclaims in wonder over them not being together in her own world. lance dominates the conversation, slouching ever more so into keith’s side while chattering brightly, spinning a tale of a series of increasingly-confounding alien diplomats’ misconceptions, a delicate political alliance contingent on them maintaining the farce, and an eventual breathless, positively cinematic confession. the whole time, allura smiles, and gasps, and is the perfect attentive audience. keith, characteristically, is quiet, only interjecting to reign in some of lance’s more embellished plot-points. 

(keith spends most of the conversation simply looking at her, his eyes dark with understanding. allura is not proud to say that she avoids his gaze, but she does. her respect for the keith of her reality, always high, is felt acutely in that moment. after all, this conversation is enlightening- and he is far braver than she thought.) 

*

she works closely with coran and her other self, even pidge on occasion, exhaustively going over the details of her trip into the rift, the trials and travails of her alchemic journey up until that point. the sessions are part desperate search for answers, part training for the allura who never had the opportunity to unlock these powers in herself. this allura has certainly not been shielded from battle, not by any means. after all, she learned her lessons of warriorhood at her mother’s knee, just as she learned diplomacy at her father’s. together they shaped her into a leader, a fighter, a ruler. and there is not a universe in existence, allura is sure, where she does not strive to do justice to their legacy. 

(in some ways, allura is jealous of this universe’s version of her. as much as she loves blue, and being a paladin, those duties had frequently torn her from her place at the head of the coalition. she has found herself, slightly perplexingly, in the position of taking orders from keith and shiro, and occasionally even lance. and although they are all excellent leaders in their own way, allura is, in another universe, in a former life, a queen.)

(in other ways, allura looks at this world’s allura, and is not jealous at all. she sees how there is still distance between her and the paladins. she sees how this allura does not join in on paladin activities, has never played monsters and mana, cannot sit easily with the five of them and joke, and tell stories, and laugh, too busy looking over starmaps and treaties. she sees how this allura yearns, even still, for any single scrap of connection to her past, to altea, and shudders at the memory of the dangerous roads that yearning had led her own self down, before she learned, painfully, to move on.)

(she sees how this allura goes to bed alone.)

*

“woah, woah, woah, you left part of your _soul_ behind?”

they are at the dinner table near the end of a long quintant, tucking into their food goo, idly discussing the possibilities for getting allura back home. everyone is at least half listening in, even if allura is fairly certain, from the increasing redness of keith’s face, that lance is playing footsie with him beneath the table. allura hadn’t thought anyone was truly paying great attention to her conversation with… herself, but this interjection comes from hunk.

this snaps everyone’s attention to her, and she nervously pushes her hair behind her ear. she had mentioned quintessence transfer to the others before, in passing, as a potential bond they could exploit to connect back to her reality through the rift. she had skirted, however, around explicitly stating that she had actually transferred a part of her quintessence into someone, because… well. she hadn’t precisely been ready to get into the details of how. or who.

(she didn’t even know if it had worked, adrenaline and desperation prompting her, in what she thought were her final moments, to will some of her quintessence out of her body through a kiss. she hadn’t been thinking of establishing a tether or creating a true bond of any sort. she had simply wanted to leave a part of herself with him. a selfish fantasy that the last touch of her lips to his would linger, that his memory of her in turn, would never fade. that even if she had to leave him, he would not be alone.)

“it’s not a part of my soul,” she clarifies, hedging. “altea doesn’t really have a concept of souls, though i suppose it’s as close as your human mythologies come to understanding quintessence.”

pidge leans forward, glasses glinting. she looks intrigued, and the curiosity shared between her and hunk makes allura feel a little trapped. if anyone can get the full story out of her through sheer persistence and nosiness, it is these two.

coran, thankfully, jumps in here. “indeed! quintessence transfer is simply the deposit of quintessential energy into a vessel, usually for safekeeping. it can either be mined from environmental sources or pulled from within the alchemist. if the quintessence source is not entirely drained, a bond remains between the quintessence source and the vessel, even as quintessence perpetually replenishes itself in living beings.”

allura’s relief is short-lived, however, as coran slides a terrifyingly knowing look her way and continues: “it is, however, exceptionally rare for the vessel to be a sentient creature. if the transfer takes, the bond in that case would likely be much stronger, as the quintessence of the vessel would incorporate that of the source, strengthening it immeasurably.

i say it’s rare because it is much more likely that the vessel would reject the source’s quintessence. the vessel and source would need to have a very strong existing bond in order for the transfer to take.”

it’s at this point that lance interjects, leaning towards hunk and pidge to whisper, perfectly audibly, “dudes, allura made a horcrux!”

it’s obvious that the allura and coran of this world are befuddled by this reference, but allura spent over 14 vargas watching the most recent edition (”reboot, ‘lura, it’s called a reboot”) of those movies with her lance (and then nearly forty more eagerly devouring the ancient literature they were based on). she knows precisely to what lance is referencing, and is wholly unimpressed.

she clears her throat over pidge and shiro’s loud guffaws (and hunk and keith’s equally loud sighs, with which she wholeheartedly sympathizes). the room quiets and, voice prim, she responds, “to coran’s point, i did attempt to make a quintessential transfer prior to moving into the rift, but i have no way of knowing if it took. we can explore it as an option, but i’m afraid that altean alchemy is rather more delicate than all that.”

she stands, sweeping non-existent crumbs from her body for effect, and slides a smirk lance’s way. “certainly, if i were seeking immortality, i fancy myself more of a nicholas flamel than a tom riddle.”

with that she exits the room, grin spreading across her face as she listens to the beat of shocked silence left in her wake, promptly followed by raucous exclaiming and a distinctly shiro-sounding cackle.

*

they never get the chance to go more in depth into the theoretical usefulness of her potential quintessence transfer. the team is busy, still fighting a war after all, and when they are not in battle they are doing much of the same work with the coalition as they had been in her reality (though with significantly less ice skating). they are all working overtime, taking care of all their usual responsibilities, as well as trying to help allura find her way home. for her part, she is eager to pitch in wherever she can.

(allura is ill-equipped to handle downtime. she despises it, in fact. there are simply too many neatly-packed emotions waiting in her head. if she slows down, stops working, stops striving, they will have too much space in which to rattle around. compartmentalizing has always been something allura has excelled at. de-compartmentalizing, however, not so much.)

in the end it doesn’t matter that they’re busy, that even with all of allura’s knowledge and her counterpart’s intuition they simply do not have the resources, they do not have the time, to figure this out. in the end it does not matter.

he comes for her regardless.

*

they are experiencing a rare moment of downtime, drifting through space in a tucked-away galaxy, far from galra control. the paladins are together in the lounge, relaxing, and allura has coaxed her counterpoint there as well. they are supposedly going through the castle’s virtual library, looking for clues, but allura is pleased to see that her other self has been drawn into yet another of hunk and pidge’s debates about modulation. she knows enough about engineering to egg them on, a familiar gleam of mischief in her eyes as she stirs the conversation up with sly asides every time it threatens to calm down.

allura, for her own part, is half-listening, trying to keep from looking at lance and keith on the couch opposite. they are stretched out together in a rare display of public affection, keith napping on lance’s chest, and lance has a tablet propped up on keith’s back. allura is glad that keith is the one asleep, as she is as certain that keith would notice her surreptitious glances as she is that lance has not.

the lounge has a full window, and through it allura can see an endless expanse of stars, gleaming in the inky blackness.

blackness that is abruptly interrupted, in a sudden swell of light, expanding from a pin-prick of a distant star to eclipsing the window within ticks. allura shouts and jumps to her feet, hand moving to her side and bayard materializing in hand. she hears exclamations from the other paladins, as well as the clatter of a tablet falling to the ground, followed immediately by two grunts as lance and keith roll off the couch.

it’s over as quickly as it begun, before lance and keith can even scramble to their feet, before allura can even finish taking in the breath after her shout. the bloom of light collapses in on itself, winking away into nothing. from it’s epicenter, or what used to be, a trail of light appears, streaking towards the castle. allura’s eyesight is better than the humans’, and she’s sure that they’re still blinking away the aftershocks from the sudden flash of light when she realizes what that trail means.

for a tick, allura can’t breathe, can’t bear to hope that what she’s seeing is real. in the next, a whisper trickles into her mind, faint, wholly new but entirely familiar. a tick after that, and allura is running.

*

she knows the others are following her, probably startled and concerned by her mad dash out the door. she can hear them calling her, asking her to slow down, but she can’t. she feels as though this moment, the one she’s dreamed of, the one she’s barely allowed herself to hope for, is like water trickling through her cupped hands. once it’s gone, she won’t get it back.

she barrels around a corner and straight down the hallway leading from the main antechamber to the red lion’s hangar. she can hear keith, hot on her heels, galra genes making it easier for him to keep up. wildly, her heart thudding in her ears, she fancies that even without those, he’d know where she was headed.

there is one thing, after all, of which the two of them share a perfect understanding.

allura dashes into the red lion’s hangar and comes to a dead stop.

there are two red lions here.

allura feels like everything should be indistinct, like nothing should be registering properly with her. she feels like she should think she’s dreaming, that everything should seem distant, blurry, impossible to grasp, like smoke. instead, she is fully, thoroughly _aware_.

she’s aware of the others making it into the hangar. first keith, then herself and coran, and the other paladins shortly thereafter. she’s aware of keith stopping them, telling them to wait, to give her a moment. she’s aware of herself, stepping forward as the red lion lowers her head and opens her mouth. she’s aware of the ache in her lungs as she tries to catch her breath.

she hears his footsteps clatter against the metal of the lion’s ramp, and then she sees him.

*

the first thing that allura notices is that he’s older. it’s only been a few phoebs that she’s been stuck on this side of the rift, but obviously in her proper reality time has passed differently. he’s not a lot older, no more than a few years, but he’s a little taller, a little broader in the shoulders, hair a little longer. he’s got a scar cutting through his eyebrow, and dark smudges, like shadows, under his eyes.

and he has altean markings.

they’re blue, and as he walks toward her they start to glow a little. he takes a few quick steps forward, then stops, not far from the lion, looking suddenly unsure. his hand comes up to rub his neck in a gesture so familiar she has the sudden, near-irrepressible urge to cry.

he licks his lips, nervous, and when he speaks his voice cracks a little.

“um…hi?”

allura breaks.

before she knows it, she’s running, rapidly closing the distance between them and leaping into his arms. she doesn’t do it full tilt, like she kind of wants to, because she might actually flatten him, but she lays off enough that he can catch her, arms immediately moving to support her as she locks her ankles behind his back. she catches the barest glimpse of his wide-eyed gaze, the marks on his cheeks so bright now they’re almost blinding, and then she’s kissing the living daylights out of him.

she thinks she might hear gasps, perhaps even a startled yelp, but in this moment, allura could not give a _flying quiznack_. she relishes the feel of his lips on hers, one of his hands sliding up her back, her fingers buried in his hair. they kiss for a long, blissful dobosh, and she only realizes she’s crying when he pulls away, just enough to move his hand from her back to her cheek, brushing away the moisture there.

he’s crying too, and she dutifully sweeps her thumbs under his eyes, delicate over the altean marks whose glow has begun to fade. the marks on his cheeks make the blue of his eyes stand out even more, but so too do the dark, almost bruise-like circles under his eyes. tears spill anew, her forehead coming down to rest against his as guilt for the marks she’s left him with nearly overcomes her.

“i’m sorry,” she whispers, lips so close to his they brush together as she speaks. “you promised me i’d never be alone, but i-" she's gasping now, unable to get enough air into her lungs, "-i couldn’t do the same. lance, i’m so sorry, i-”

her shoulders heave and now she’s truly weeping, full-out, sobs wracking her body. he sets her down gently, tugging her close again as soon as her feet are firmly on the ground. one hand grips her around her waist and the other is at the back of her head, holding her face against his neck as she cries.

eventually she pulls away, chancing a look up at his face. despite it all he’s smiling, eyes still shiny with tears. he looks a little sad, yes, but nevertheless she can see it, feel it: deep conviction and always, always, breathtaking devotion.

“thank you for coming for me,” she whispers.

he smiles wider, cups her face in his palms, warm against her skin. "across galaxies, across universes, across realities,” he breathes, and kisses her again.


End file.
